DO TRANSPORT COSTS HAVE A DIFFERENTIAL EFFECT ON TRADE AT THE SECTORAL LEVEL?
This article aims to analyse the determinants of transport costs and to investigate their influence in international trade with a sample of disaggregate trade data. First, we estimate a transport-cost function using cross-section data on maritime and overland transport for four sectors: agro-industry, ceramic tiles, motor vehicle parts and accessories, and electrical and mechanical household appliances, obtained from interviews held with Spanish exporters and logistics operators in 2001. Second, we study the relationship between transport costs and trade and estimate the elasticity of trade with respect to transport costs for each sector. Important differences for high value- and low value-…
Transport Logistics and Modal Split of Spanish Exports to Europe: Empirical Evidence
This article attempts to find the determinants of mode choice decisions for Spanish shipments to Europe and North Africa in four productive sectors that presents differentiated transport logistics. To this end, exhaustive fieldwork was carried out and a database constructed, including 1251 observations collected from transport decision-makers. A mixed logit is used to estimate a modal choice model, consistent with economic theory of modal choice in a price-time reliability framework. The main findings are that quality attributes of service influence modal choice only for the relatively high-value sectors whereas relatively low-value sectors are mainly affected by transport costs. In terms o…
Trade Openness and Income: A Tale of Two Regions
In this article we present evidence of the long-run effect of trade openness on income per worker for two regions that have followed different liberalization strategies, namely Asia and Latin America. A model that re-examines these questions is estimated for two panels of Asian and Latin American countries over the 1980-2008 period using a novel empirical approach that accounts for endogeneity as well as for the time series properties of the variables involved. From an econometric point of view, we apply recent panel cointegration techniques based on factor models that account for two additional elements usually neglected in previous empirical literature: cross-dependence and structural bre…
Impact of Transport Costs on International Trade: The Case of Spanish Ceramic Exports
This paper aims to investigate the determinants of maritime and overland transport costs and the role they play in deterring trade across countries. We estimate a transport cost function using data on maritime and overland transport of the ceramic sector (tiles) obtained from interviews held with Spanish logistics operators. We also study the relationship between transport costs and trade and estimate an import demand model for ceramic products. Additionally, we present a discussion on the sensitivity of trade flows and transportation costs to the existence of back-hauling, special conditions for transport and number of reloads.1 The study of modal transport (overland versus maritime) and i…